‘When?’
‘I’ll see you there in twenty minutes, half-five.’
‘I bet it’s really dirty and ‘orrible.’
‘Will I meet you in a fuckin launderette somewhere then?’
‘They always are, boozers outside railway stations.’
‘You can be really fuckin anal sometimes, son.’
‘What’s that mean? Queer or something? I bet I’ve fucked more–’
But he’s gone. I click the phone shut. That’s what it’s like in this game, someone gives you a hard time, you just give it to someone else. If in twenty minutes I asked Gene what he meant, people would holler I was bearing a grudge, he wouldn’t remember or he’d tell me to fuck off. I had big plans for tonight as well.
Thirty minutes later I’m in the bar. As Gene said it’s right on top of the station. It’s lively, clean, but there’s no sign of Gene. Fifteen minutes go by before Morty comes walking in and tells me that Gene and Metal Mickey are going round and round the roundabout. We walk outside and seconds later Gene’s BMW pulls up with Mickey driving. We head up the Holloway Road through the early evening traffic. Gene turns back in his seat and explains that he’s arranged a meet with the Yahoos in a lock-up they’ve got up in Edmonton, just to see what they’ve got, what sorta money they’re lookin for, to get the full SP. They’re anxious to get things moving. I’ve got my little bag of gentleman’s toiletries, costing a hundred quid, sitting on my lap. Gene looks at them and raises one eyebrow. It’s not the right time to be pulling him about that anal remark.
Nobody’s saying much, there’s not a lot to say. Geno’s playing a tape of Johnny Cash, Live at San Quentin. Metal Mickey can’t drive for shit, thinks he’s driving a tank. I ain’t gonna be the one to tell him cos he don’t say shit, don’t say a word, but he puts out a vibe of pure sadistic intent, unquestioning obedience and loyalty. He reminds me of something outta one of those sci-fi movies about dodgy androids whose wonky wiring has led to a malfunction in the communication circuits. I’m sat behind him looking at the back of his head, the kinda head that iron bars would bounce off, leaving the poor guy holding the bar with sore hands from the vibrations. His neck is the same size as his head but he’s got the most tiny piggy ears, like a child’s. Mickey’s ex-army and most ex-army types I’ve met are wankers. They all leave the forces thinking that they’re going to set up the elite little security outfits, looking out for pop stars and other assorted VIPs, and half of them end up as shop-cops, long hours, moody uniform, patrolling the booze aisle down the supermarket. Some of them end up doing bits of freelance work and they’ve got the audacity to look down their noses at ya, like they’re better than this.
If you get captured by Mickey on a bad night, when he’s had about ten pints with chasers, he’s lagging, all Queen and Country, up the Union Jack, he’s a right pest. He loves to tell stories about how happy he was back in the Old Regiment over in Ireland, the best days of his life, Paddy bashing, fuckin Fenians and cuntin Prods as well, cos they’re all just shit-shovelling Micks, ain’t they, all the same. He’ll regale us with his tales of smashing up old biddies’ houses for a bit of a crack on a Saturday night. Nuisance or not it’s good to have him riding shotgun tonight.
We drive into a small industrial estate just off the North Circular Road in Edmonton. Mickey slows the motor so he can read the numbers stencilled on the roller shutters of each unit. When he finds the one he wants he stops the motor and gives Geno a tiny nod of the head. We get out. The two boys are looking off in all directions, down the street, along the rooftops and over into the big bitta wasteland the other side of the wire fence, but everything looks peaceful. Mickey thinks he’s back on the Falls Road. Gene and Mickey, satisfied, lean back into the motor and have the rubber mats up from under the front seats, rummage about, and when they come out of the motor again they’ve both got bulges under their jackets, the kind that are meant to be noticed. Mick’s got a nice content look on his face, anyone wants treatment can have it. He shoots me a wink. I feel better having these head-the-balls watching cos I wouldn’t fancy my chances on my lonesome with the Banditos.
Gene kicks the bottom of the shutter three times, a door in it opens and we step inside. It’s quite dark at first. My eyes take a while to adjust. The whole space, it’s bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside, is stacked with boxes from floor to ceiling, except in the middle where there’s a scattering of chairs and a huge table. It’s like an office set-up has been plonked down from nowhere, a few phones, fax machines and a lorryload of paperwork, neatly stacked and filed, well organised. It could be that someone’s up to a little bittov the old pile-it-up-and-clear-it-out fraud.
I’m relieved to see that of the three guys from their team here, I know two, Big Frankie and JD, and they’re about the two most sensible. The other one, the one who opened the door to us, is only the gofer. It’s a relief that they haven’t sent any of the more belligerent cunts to organise the trade cos we’d all be here all night while they acted the fool, did their jeckle original-gangster impression for our benefit. JD especially, who seems to be in charge, you can talk realistically to. He’s no mug, no walk-over, but he ain’t gonna let a little thing like pride or stubbornness get in the way of making a nice bitta wedge.
As much as I don’t like working with these reprobates we could all have a right tickle here. If everything goes down as I’m planning it we could have a right touch. I personally wanna come outta this thing with about, at the very worst, a hundred large to squirrel away overseas with the rest of my pension. That figure could be anything up to double or go to the quarter million, in which case I’d be chuckling, hoping Cody does the biz, and booking a nice long holiday somewhere. If this outfit have got two million pills then every penny we can nick comes to twenty thousand pounds in the final count-up. I can’t calculate anything until I’ve got a buyer either and there’s only a couple of teams, or cartels if you like, in the country who I would trust to even mention this parcel to.
‘Gary, get the chaps a beer,’ says Big Frankie.
Gary the gofer opens the brand-new fridge that’s been set up in the corner. It’s like an off-licence fridge with different brands of beer on each shelf. In the door there’s cans of Cola and a mouldy bottle of milk.
‘Do you wanna a beer?’ says JD.
‘Do you have any water?’
‘Only in the tap in the khazi.’ He laughs, tres amused by his own little joke. ‘No, hang on mate, I’m only joking. Do we have any water, Gary?’
‘No. We’ve got a Coke. Will that do?’
‘Yeah, that’s fine, Gary,’ I reply.
Gary sorts everyone out. I sit down on one side of the desk and JD sits on the other. He lights a Benson, breathes deeply and exhales long, gives the back of his neck a little massage, rolls his head from side to side and takes a long hit on a can of Stella. He’s on edge, anxious to get the best possible result.
‘Okay, JD. What you got?’
‘Two million ecstasy tablets with a high level of MDMA.’
Very Nice. He’s pleased with himself.
‘And what do you want from us?’
‘We don’t want anything from you. We want to know if you want them off us.’
‘Well, maybe, maybe not. As I understood it, you want us to shift them, sharpish, correct?’
He nods.
‘One thing,’ I say. ‘This is just me being nosey, but why did you get hold of so many if you couldn’t shift them?’
‘That’s none of your business. Don’t get busy, okay?’
He gives me a couple of seconds of harsh eye-to-eye contact to make his point. He’s sitting back in his chair getting twitchy, huffing and puffing. I imagine Morty doing that thing he does with his eyes, a roll to heaven. I lean into the table, elbows on it, put on my soothing voice.
‘One minute, now hold up JD, mate. Please, and it’s important we both understand this, JD, I ain’t gonna take anything you say to me while we’re sat down he
re personal. Please don’t take anything I say as a dig.’
‘I’m sweet.’
‘This is business, Jay.’ Hands up, palms out, leaning back, pacifying gesture. ‘Is there more where these came from?’
‘There could be, yeah, very possibly,’ he says, grinning to himself now.
‘Now, why don’t you hold fire with them and just let them go, say hundred thou a week?’
‘No way. We wanna take our money out right now.’
‘But that means knockin them out in one big hit.’
‘That’s the way we wanna play it.’
‘That means flooding the market, dropping the price. Two million Es is about how many pills get launched over a weekend in Britain, that market is covered. If a firm like yours let go another two mill it would send the whole thing crooked.’
‘You guys wouldn’t want to buy them and let them go a hundred thou at a time, would yer?’
‘That means tying up cash. We could maybe place them with some people we know but that would mean drivin the price way down. They’d want them for pennies.’
‘I thought people pegged the market?’
‘That’s a myth, JD. I wish it was true.’
JD signals Gary that he wants another beer. He crushes his empty can, slings it into the corner. I really wanna turn this into a buyer’s market without scaring them off altogether. I really wanna do this deal.
‘That watch, it’s nice, a Rolex?’ I say.
‘Course it’s a fuckin Rolex.’
JD’s watch is one of those real gaudy, opulent numbers, all diamonds on the face and a great chunky gold and steel strap. It’s snide. Even those Arab camel-drivers up the Edgware Road would have said it was over the top.
‘What did it cost?’
‘Well, somebody sorted me out. It’s worth about twelve grand but it cost me four and a quarter.’
He’s looking at me quizzically.
‘Well, I’d argue with that.’
‘You’d argue with anything, pal. What you mean, anyway?’
‘You say it’s worth twelve grand but I’d say it’s only worth what someone’s prepared to pay you for it. You see what I mean?’
‘No. You’ve got me baffled.’ He looks it.
‘What I’m sayin is the value of anything, bags of pills, gold bullion, powders, human life, even, motors, houses and Rolex watches are only worth what I can get someone to pay me for them. It’s no good me pegging the price high if the market says low.’
‘Are you saying my fuckin watch ain’t worth shit?’
‘No, no, I’m just trying to explain the market value of anything is determined by the rarity, the scarcity of the article, the vendor’s willingness to part with his cash. In other words, market forces.’
‘You’re not tryin to tell me that I’ve been had over?’
‘No way, JD. You got the bargain.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m only tryin to explain that the price I put on your truckload of pills is governed by loadsa considerations. Think about it, you got legality, rarity, quality, quantity, availability, seasonal adjustments, currency fluctuations, adverse publicity, police activity–’
‘Listen.’ JD leans into the table, locks his eyes into mine, gives a little twitch of the head and points at his Rolex. ‘Do you like this watch?’
‘Yeah, it’s lovely.’
‘That’s okay then.’ He leans back and spits.
JD’s brooding, arms folded across his chest like a big sulky baby. His outfit have sent him up to work out a deal with the smug Swell Mob and they’ve talked to him like he’s a fuckin teabag, a wanker, told him he’s gotta take any deal that they sling ‘im. JD’s disappointed cos his job was to organise the pay day but it’s looking like they’re going to be getting less than they thought, still a very tidy sum.
‘Listen, JD, we all want the best deal but it ain’t gonna just drop into our lap. I promise you this. I’ll try and get a deal that makes everybody happy.’
‘You do that, pal, you do that,’ he says.
‘You gotta trust us but if we have to cobble together great lumps of cash money to buy the goods, it means findin great lumps of readies–’ I’m fuckin about with a calculator the whole time just for fun, punching in numbers and making out I’m doing calculations in my nut ‘– and that means pullin it outta of other things for a while, it’s very disruptive. It would help the price if we could have bail on the goods.’
‘No way.’
‘Hear me out. I’m only askin you to listen to somethin. If you could get your team to agree to givin us credit it makes the whole business a lot more attractive.’
‘We want cash. C.O.D.’
‘What I’m sayin is for the sake of a few days it could mean as much as twenty-five per cent more in the final tally. That’s a lotta loot.’
‘We want cash or nothin, okay?’
‘You realise for the sake of a few days you could be muggin yourself of half a million pounds.’
He laughs. ‘This geezer’s deaf. You tell ‘im something but he don’t hear ya, just goes on and on. You lot make a pile of money for makin a few phonecalls. You can earn it, you pull up ya cash up front, then you can do what ya like.’
‘Jay, I’ll bring you a price and then we can talk again, be patient, give me until Thursday or Friday.’
He leans over, grabs my hand, squeezing it hard. ‘I won’t say it’s been a pleasure doin business cos you’re fuckin hard work.’
‘I’ll take some samples and be on my way. I’ve got to get busy.’
JD gives Gary a little nod. He disappears round the back of the wall of boxes and comes back with a brown medicine bottle and hands it to me. It’s labelled multi-vitamins and minerals, high potency, one hundred tablets. I open it and shake out a couple of the pills. They look real fuckin serious, the size of the top joint of a little finger. I haven’t seen Es like this in years.
‘Let’s hope we can do some business,’ I say.
We get out at last. It looks increasingly like we can have a nice big pay day. It’s a drag they haven’t agreed to bail cos cobblin together big amounts is a problem for us. Going to Jimmy for cash is always a non-starter. It could be done but it meant letting other firms in on your moves. I put the jar snugly in my inside pocket. It feels like the tip of a seriously lucrative iceberg. I wanna do some serious calculations but Mort’s anxious to know what I think we could move the parcel on for. I have to tell him to be patient and get Mickey to drop me outside Seven Sisters tube station.
‘I think you upset them back there tonight,’ says Mort as I get out.
‘Fuck ’em,’ I reply.
I jump on a train and it takes me about ten minutes into the Cross, straight upstairs, cabs waiting and nobody in the queue. I jump in the first cab and tell the cabbie to take me down to Hoxton Market. This is where Sir Alex, chief chemical taster, resides. This is a boy who knows his drugs. I hope he’s in. I’m sure he’ll be glad to see me, he usually is. I always check things with Alex cos he’s straight with me. If it’s shit merchandise he’ll tell me so and if it’s pukka he’ll tell me that as well.
The lights are on and there’s somebody home. I’m right, he’s glad to see me. Alex gives me a big fucking bear hug and a big old slap on the back. He drags me up the stairs like I’m his long lost brother. I ain’t seen him for about six weeks but you’d think it’s six years. He wants to drag me into the front room to introduce me to his entourage but I ain’t really got time.
‘How are you?’ says Sir Alex.
‘Busy, really fuckin busy.’
‘But you’re okay?’
‘Yeah, I guess so. Tricks are good but I ain’t got time to enjoy things.’
‘What are you lot up to tonight?’
‘One of the guys is playin later and we’re gonna go down and hang out.’
‘Good, cos I got some stuff that needs checkin out on a scale of one to ten. You know the score.’
‘I sure do.’
‘The geezers who gave me this reckon it’s a bit fuckin special, really powerful, old-school, like the stuff from eighty-seven, eighty-eight.’
‘They all say that.’
‘But check it out, okay Alex?’
‘Sure.’
‘I need to know about midday tomorrow, Alex.’
‘If you wanna hang about an hour you can know now.’
‘Ain’t got time.’
Twenty minutes later I’m indoors. Morty’s left a cryptic message – he’s had a word, we’re going on a trip, pack a bag, meaning we’re going up north, saying he’ll be round at one in the afternoon, meaning nine in the morning. I put the brown sample bottle in the bathroom in among all the other medicines and aftershaves. There don’t seem to be much point plugging them. I eat, have a roasting hot shower, pour myself a brandy and crush half a Valium into it to really switch off cos I know if I don’t I won’t get a fuckin wink of sleep all night. After a couple of gulps of the rich spirit it hits me it’s been a long day so I turn it in at five-past eleven, which is some kinda record for me. I really believe in beauty sleep.
Tuesday Oop North
Morty just grunts ‘Okay’ as I get in. He don’t look up from his paper. Mister Clark’s got a brand-new, rented, top-of-the-range Rover using a moody licence and the credit card. In an emergency we simply walk away from it. It’s good that Clarkie’s driving cos he can work a motor like it’s part of him, the ride is tranquil, not like Morty’s crazy, hurry-up-and-go driving, racing between traffic lights at sixty miles an hour like we had old bill up our tails. Clarkie goes on those advanced driving courses with ex-old-bill instructors, the kind those driver-cum-bodyguards go on. You learn how to avoid getting your charge kidnapped, pursuit evasion. He picks up a lot of insight into how the Other People work. Clarkie’s driving round in big circles trying to work out if we’re being ready-eyed. A regional crime squad team will use anything up to six motors, in relays. Local gathers will only have the impounded shit-heap motors they’ve got knocking about in the yard. Morty’s obviously told Clarkie that he wants some peace and quiet, so Clarkie’s taken a powder.
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